


Stay With Me

by ScreamQueenBee (screamqueenbee)



Category: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Multi, Post RHatO 40, ex-Joyfire, ex-Royfire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3612831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamqueenbee/pseuds/ScreamQueenBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I tried to fix it and I couldn't, originally an anon fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay With Me

It’s lonely, without Kory. Jason does what he does best and shuts down, focusing on the next case, the mission that very briefly had been displaced by the strange alien princess. Roy can’t hide the hurt or the loss he’s feeling when Kory said that it was over, he wanders around Jason’s apartment like a ghost. Quiet and tense in a way that Jason had never seen in him before.

Sure, Jason had loved Kory. Probably more than he had ever loved anyone before, including Essence and Isabel. But one of the greatest lessons that Bruce Wayne had ever taught him was to compartmentalize and he uses it.

That starts a fight between Jason and Roy on more than one occasion, in which Roy accuses Jason of not giving a damn about Kory or his feelings. Jason tells him, fed up with the tension between them, that if Roy doesn’t like it, he’s free to leave whenever he wanted, and that Jason wasn’t holding him against his will.

Jason doesn’t actually expect the archer to leave, but he can’t let it affect him. People leave. Everyone leaves. Jason’s used to it and that’s what happens when not one person in twenty three years of living stays longer than to get something out of him.

He goes to bed with that thought, because if he lets himself think about how much he misses his friends it will destroy him more than the Joker, Sar’u, or The Untitled ever could.

Jason doesn’t wake up again until there’s a wet, shivering body trying to slide into bed in front of him. It takes exactly three seconds for the kris hidden under his pillows to come out and for the intruder to show his hands.

“It’s just me, Jason.” He reaches over and flicks on the light on the nightstand. Jason puts the kris back into its sheath, Roy hugs himself. He looks terrible, clothes soaked from cold winter rain and his hair hanging in his face, dripping rainwater onto the sheets.

“What the hell are you doing, Harper?” Jason’s voice comes out colder than he intends, the archer almost recoils like he’s been hit.

He looks away, anywhere but Jason’s face. “C’mon… I can’t sleep in that other bed.”

“Then sleep on the couch.” The Bat runs a hand through his sleep-tangled curls and shifts so he can go back to sleep.

“Jay!” He looks up and into Roy’s blotchy face. His eyes are red and the green stands out more than usual because he’s been crying. “Please. I can’t sleep because I’ll wake up and think she’s there. I’m so cold, I promise it’ll just be for tonight.”

He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want the other to press up against him and be given that brief hope that Kory isn’t the reason for it. Jason’s heart wouldn’t be able to take it. He wants to tell Roy that he’ll take the couch, to sleep it off. The smell of cigarette smoke and cheap beer is too heavily soaked into Roy's clothes, and Jason hopes he hasn't done something  _really_ stupid.

But he can’t.

So he gives his best, most put-upon look and rolls over so his back is to Roy. “Just for tonight.”

He can feel Roy shift around until comfortable, not touching Jason at all, and lay down. “Thanks, Jay. I owe you one.”

_Please, don’t…_

“Don’t mention it.”


End file.
